It sickens me to think that a day that should have been one of joy, celebration, relief, and accomplishment was absolutely ruined and tainted by an act of terror.
Can you imagine, being one of the runners, running mile after mile, being cheered on by your family and friends, seeing the finish line in front of you, and having that winning, beautiful moment be torn away from you in an instant? You’ve been training for months for one of the most long-awaited events, but instead, you find yourself surrounded by chaos and tears and screaming, and even blood. Your legs, what used to be your most powerful tool, have betrayed you.
With these tragedies recently, it’s been inexplicable sadness, but also fear. There seems to be nowhere to hide from the cruelty of humans.
What’s worse, is that this marathon was dedicated to the Newtown victims, and the families of Newtown were sitting in the VIP section, just by the finish line. How much more trauma and sadness can a person feel in such a short amount of time??
I’m starting to understand how it happened, but why it happened is another story. What is the lesson to be learned from this? Does there have to be a lesson? Heightened security? Firearm control? Better mental institutions for those in need? Or what?!?! Because I’d rather not be taught anything if it calls for this kind of cost.
But I also don’t want to say I hate the world and human beings and all things bad, because there is goodness.
Again, I don’t have any answers or anything important to say, but I’m again turning to quotes for some solace, and hopefully these will help you too:
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” – Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers)
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” – Gandhi
“You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me.” – Jim Butcher
“Sometimes, the wicked will tell us things just to confuse us–to haunt our thoughts long after we’ve faced them.” – Sarah J. Maas
“You’re getting older, and you’ll see that life isn’t like your fairy tales. The world is a cruel place. And you’ll learn that, even if it hurts.” – Pan’s Labyrinth
“Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don’t.” – Schindler’s List
“I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always … so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.” – Life of Pi
“It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.” – Atonement
“It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.” – Atonement
I can’t believe I was in Boston just a couple of weeks ago, in the bustling, good-to-do Copley Square…
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